Out of Space

It’s obvious by the curious shape of some electric cars that battery packs take up too much space but technology consultants at Prodrive have solutions that make energy storage more compact, efficient and cheaper.
To make our battery-powered and hybrid cars work harder for us we need more voltage and with more voltage comes more cells and more cells mean more cost (and more weight) which equals not very efficient at all. That’s why we need a consortium Prodrive, the University of Manchester, HILTech Developments, Sloan Electronics Ltd, International Transformers and Newcastle University).They have come up with a new type of bi-directional DC-DC converter that gives a 600v output from a 380v source and maintains its output even when the source voltage drops to as little as 200v. By means of topology a power source can now be 97% efficient as well as being affordable and not hampering the looks or the handling of a car so much. Result!